The Blog

Convention-Bound Quick Hits

Hello from Jacksonville, FL! I’ve been here since Monday hanging out with some relatives before I have to attend the National Right to Life Convention which starts today!! I haven’t taken much time to post anything, but I have been keeping my eye on what’s going on around the web. A few things worth mentioning:

Singer has spent a lifetime justifying the unjustifiable. He is the founding father of the animal liberation movement and advocates ending “the present speciesist bias against taking seriously the interests of nonhuman animals.” He is also a defender of killing the aged (if they have dementia), newborns (for almost any reason until they are two years old), necrophilia (assuming it’s consensual), and bestiality (also assuming it’s consensual).

It’s easy to want to shrug this guy off as a raving lunatic that no one in their right mind would pay attention to, but he’s been “eerily influential”, as Carter put it, in the academic world.

–Using the findings of behavioral scientists here in the US, Bernardo M. Villegas warns people in the Philippines, where some are pushing a “reproductive health” bill to curb population growth, among other things, that Contraception Leads to Abortion:

The social norm of avoiding pre-marital sex is more easily discarded when contraceptives are widely available. This transformation of behavior is explained by (Nobel laureate George Arthur) Akerlof’s theory about “social identity.” He and co-author Rachel Kranton argued that individuals do not have preferences only over different goods and services.

They also adhere to social norms for how different people should behave. The widespread use of contraceptives and the introduction of legal abortion in the United States changed the social norms which kept abortions at a low level in the past.

Fact: legalized abortion in the United States was a product of legalized contraception, which came 8 years before it.

It is a preposterously stupid idea to encourage women deliberately to postpone first-time motherhood until they are middle-aged, without concern for the obvious arguments against such a decision.

That’s probably not all. But I’m heading out the door to go to the convention as we speak, so that will have to do. Check out the schedule for this year’s convention. Do you see any workshops you would be interested in? I haven’t totally decided what I’m going to attend on Friday and Saturday. Would welcome your suggestions!